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I have been messing about in boats all of my life, spending hours rowing my dory into sea marshes full of greenish mud and hermit crabs and sea gulls and herons. I fished for flounder and eel with a drop line and trawled for mackerel with a shiner. I caught blowfish for my mother, who considered their lower regions a great delicacy, and captured horse shoe crabs for my aunt, who ate their stomachs. Read more.

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Testimonials

Liz CunninghamThe Battle for the Black Fen is a deftly written work of eco-fiction which sheds piercing light on our current environmental crisis.

Liz CunninghamOcean Advocate

Council for Wisconsin WritersThe Council for Wisconsin Writers presents the first prize for Booklength Nonfiction written during the year 1981 to Annis Pratt’s Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction: A beautifully written book on a topic that breaks new ground in literary and feminist criticism. Pratt and associates have drawn on a wealth of materials (over 300 novels written by women) to uncover certain “archetypal patterns”—characters, situations, and themes which recur in women’s fiction. Reading the book is a pr…

Council for Wisconsin Writers

Cynthia HahnIn contrast to the traditional European and North American assumption of mind mastering nature, Pratt’s conclusion supports the ‘Gaia’ concept of the earth as an interactive, interdependent gestalt of life forms. She redefines archetypes as elements in an interwoven matrix comprising earth, humans, and other living beings.

Cynthia HahnCanadian Literature

Carol P. ChristA brilliant feminist revision of archetypal analysis..highly recommended for those interested in archetypal criticism, women and religion, and religion and literature.

Carol P. ChristReligious Studies Review

Traverse City Record-EagleAnnis Pratt, a Michigan author who summers on the Betsie River, has published “The Marshlanders.” The novel features characters who travel among the creatures Pratt knows from kayaking the Betsie — mink, otters, frogs, turtles, deer and birds.
It’s the story of conflict between self-sustaining communities and others who want to drain the wetlands for agricultural development. Pratt’s previous nonfiction books, “Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction” and “Dancing with Goddesses…

Traverse City Record-EagleBooks In Brief

Mary WoodburyAnnis Pratt’s novels are full of passion for the natural world and enthusiasm for the details of everyday life. Her invented worlds are more realistic than fantastic, and her speculative fiction imagines ways to live in harmony with each other and with our planet. Infinite Games is a four-novel series about Marshlanders who seek harmony with the Earth and each other.

Mary Woodbury

Sharman A. RussellEcofictions are a new and important genre in literature. Annis Pratt has based her story on a conflict from three hundred years ago that continues today, between the unthinking drive toward industrialization and resource consumption and the growing awareness that our actions have irrevocable consequences for the Earth that sustains us. We need new ways of thinking and feeling about our place in the natural world. Stories like this help us imagine those new ways, even as we are entertained by the…

Sharman A. Russell

Cathy N. Davidson“It is not often that a reader wants to kick off her shoes, settle down in a comfortable chair, and enjoy a work of meticulous literary scholarship. But Annis Pratt’s Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction encourages just that.
Partly it is a matter of style: Pratt writes with an elegant lucidity. Her prose soars and sails, carrying the reader happily along. Partly it is a matter of substance: Pratt assesses how for 300 years women have maintained their own tradition of writing f…

Cathy N. DavidsonMs. Magazine

Helen DumontAs time rolls on, America’s wetlands are more and more threatened.
“The Marshlanders” tells the story of a clash between those who love the wetlands and their unique state and those who want to see them drained for development and other uses. A story of accepting nature and defending it against those who would defile it, “The Marshlanders” should prove to be a fascinating read with much to think about.

Helen DumontMidwest Book Review

Megan ShafferLocal author Annis Pratt is on the move. Though the Birmingham resident and former college professor is now retired, she certainly doesn’t appear to be altering her pace. As a community activist, writer, facilitator, and educator, Pratt is well known for her intellectual and philosophical prowess.
However, it is for her latest accomplishment as a novelist that Ms. Pratt took some time to discuss the journey toward the achievement of her dream.
“I wanted to be a poet and …

Megan ShafferBirmingham Patch Night Light Revue

Meta

“It was the kind of night they had been waiting for-clear, and with a high wind. A gale roared across a pitch black sky pricked with stars. Bethany was mounted on Peredur. Emma, with eight-year old Ben clinging to her waist, rode Branwyn. As they trotted across the cliff, Bethany checked the wings, made of leather and willow and gull feathers, strapped along her pony’s sides. Wing straps in her left hand, reins in her right, she kept five yards between her pony and Branwyn. They needed to be close, but not too close, when they soared over the ocean.”

Please join me as we travel with Bethany and Ben, Clare and William, through a harsh world changing under their feet. The world they long for, where they have sustained themselves contentedly for time out of mind, has been shattered by greedy corporate interests. Yet the Marshlanders have a plan…

You can read sample chapters here, you can buy The Marshlandershere, Fly Out of the Darknesshere,The Road to Beaver Mill here, and The Battle for the Black Fenhere.

Here is my blog, written for people interested in folklore, games and dances, environmental philosophy, and the early modern history that I adapt in my Eco-fiction novels series, Infinite Games.

I also invite you to subscribe to my blog to receive regular updates about the world of the Marshlanders, every week to ten days. Subscribers are the “inner circle”: you’ll also receive fan news, including early notifications, opportunities to review upcoming materials (and sometimes even a mention in a book!), along with special offers.

As a “thank you”, all new subscribers also automatically receive a chapter from Fly Out of the Darkness.

I promise never to share your email address with anyone else, and if you choose to unsubscribe, I’ve set things up so you can do that with one click.

You can also read two chapters from my memoir: The Peripatetic Papers here and here.

Why I wrote the Infinite Games series

I long for a world where “the greater good” matters more than selfish individuality.

Yet I have always lived in a world where profit and status rule.

I invite you to share in my quest through moor and meadow, marsh and mere, for the worlds we long for. I have chosen fiction to express my hope that our lovely planet can survive because I believe that story-telling engages our hearts in the truths we seek.

Infinite Games is a four-novel series about Marshlanders who seek harmony with the earth and each other. Marshlanders are creatively practical: always looking for new ideas about farming, irrigation, navigating, foraging, and weaving. Their enemies want to drain their wetlands for exploitation and profit: they pursue technology out of greed, and govern by male domination and military force. Infinite Games is the story of the Marshlanders’ struggle to create communities in harmony with nature.

The four novels in my series—The Marshlanders, Fly Out of the Darkness, The Road to Beaver Mill, and The Battle for the Black Fen—are works of speculative fiction in a real-world setting, and are written for adults and young adults.